Obituary

Chiara Lubich

Chiara Lubich, who has died aged 88, was one of the most influential women in world Catholicism - and, in her quiet, understated way, also one of the most inspiring. Focolare, the grassroots religious movement she founded in her native Italy during the second world war, grew under her leadership to encompass 2 million adherents in 182 countries. It was, she said, "one family united in truth", and, though a large proportion of those involved are Catholics, Focolare also embraces other Christians, those of other faiths, and those of none.

Only Mother Teresa of Calcutta could match Lubich's influence as a woman in the all-male world of the Vatican under John Paul II. Both addressed synods of the world's bishops, but where the Albanian nun founded traditional male and female religious orders, carrying out charitable works, Lubich leaves behind what was, in its time, one of the pioneering lay movements in the church, and an organisation that remains committed to social justice and ecumenism.

Unusually for a Catholic movement, Focolare did not begin with the laying down of rules, but instead with Lubich's simple trust in God's love. "No one knew," she wrote, "how events would develop. It was revealed to us gradually. Even the structure of the movement, more than being suggested to us by human ideas, was inspired by a charism that is a gift of God."

Part of her appeal was that Lubich was not a typical Catholic leader. She eschewed any cult of personality and those who joined her movement - officially called the Work of Mary, but known usually by its Italian name, Focolare, meaning "hearth" - became part of something that grew organically. It started out in a Europe in the ruins of a world war, then expanded during the Hungarian revolution of 1956 behind the iron curtain into the often clandestine Christian communities of the Soviet bloc. From the 1960s onwards it promoted inter-church relationships and development in the third world.

Brazil and Italy are Focolare strongholds, while in Cameroon it has built, and maintains, a village, Fontem, complete with schools and hospitals. It is one of 35 such "little towns" set up by Focolare from Ireland to Argentina.

In her own unflamboyant way, Lubich rejoiced in this growth, personally inspiring many to join an ever-expanding organisation. Small in stature, a gifted speaker and author of many spiritual books as well as her Word of Life newspaper columns, she was guided by her conviction that Jesus was alive in the world; her determination to follow the example of the crucified and forsaken Christ by siding with the poor and marginalised; and her loyalty to the church.

Sometimes that came at a price. In the 1950s, the Vatican regarded Focolare with some suspicion. Lay movements were then a new phenomenon and - unlike the traditionalist Opus Dei that thrived in Franco's Spain - there was a radical edge to much of what Focolare did. On several occasions, Focolare was threatened with closure, and some tried to encourage Lubich into a more conventional religious order.

But she believed that God had called her and, with the advent of the modernising era of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), she finally convinced the authorities of her sincerity. "Doing what God wants from us, moment by moment," she wrote, "we will find that it satisfies us fully. It gives peace, joy, happiness and, indeed, a foretaste of heaven."

Silvia Lubich was the second of four children, born in Trento, northern Italy. Her mother was a devout Catholic, her father a socialist who lost his job in the Mussolini era. His daughter had to postpone university plans to keep the family afloat. From the age of 19, she was convinced that God was calling her, and she became a lay member of the Franciscan order, taking the name Chiara - Italian for Clare - in imitation of the close collaborator of St Francis of Assisi. As a primary school teacher in late 1943, she joined other young women to help those injured by the allied bombing of Trento. Out of this work Focolare grew, fusing practical work with gospel values. That idealism won many members after the war.

In the early 1960s, Lubich met Lutheran pastors and sisters. Seeing that they shared so much, she was encouraged to embrace an ecumenical dimension to her work. In 1963, she spoke at Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral and nurtured the first British Focolare groups.

Of the 2 million Focolare followers, around 140,000 have formally committed to the movement. A core of around 4,000 take vows of chastity and poverty and live in communities. Some are priests, but most have jobs and pool their wages with the community.

In 1977 Lubich was awarded the Templeton Prize for progress in religion and, in 1996, both the Unesco Peace Education Prize and the Gold Cross of Saint Augustine at Lambeth Palace.

She remained Focolare's president until her death. She would not have described herself as a feminist, but she insisted, when the Vatican approved the Focolare constitution in 1990, that its presidency should be reserved for women.

· Chiara Lubich, religious leader, born January 22 1920; died March 14 2008